Posted
by
timothy
on Friday January 06, 2012 @06:22PM
from the sounds-like-a-good-video-game dept.

sciencehabit writes "A surfacing whale is a sight to see, but it would be even more dramatic to watch one ply the ocean depths. Researchers have taken a step closer to doing just that with sophisticated radio-tagging technology and a new computer program that uses the data to recreate a whale's path underwater. The results, which look a bit like a whale riding a roller coaster (see video), are helping scientists understand how the school bus-sized beasts are able to take in enough food to sustain their great girth, and how underwater noises, such as sonar, might affect their well-being."

Some roller coaster... a 15 meter dive in 2.5 minutes, then a 180 meter dive in 12 minutes. Then five lunges "in quick succession" (again minutes for a coupe of dozen meters, I would estimate). I think the author of that article has never been on a roller coaster. Also, even if a whale goes straight down, it will still be pretty close to 1g. Boooooring...

I wonder what it would be like if, against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet... I wonder if it will be friends with me... thud.

Watching the initial lunge, then looping back through the (I assume) cloud of food reminds me of excessive hours playing Elite [wikipedia.org] in the 1980s (and Oolite [oolite.org] these days) : hit ^H^H^H come across the recently blown-apart carcass of a pirate victim and try to gather as many cargo canisters from the rapidly expanding and dispersing cloud BEFORE they disperse to the solar wind, while trying to play off acceleration time (your fuel scoops only operate at maximum speed) against distance and time used in decelerating an